The Sicilian's Passion (9 page)

He had been dating Anna since his third year in college, and had recognised that in her he had found a woman who would make him the perfect wife. Through the many years which had followed, that certainty had never wavered. And yet he had thrown it all away for Kate Connors.

‘It was exactly as you would expect,' he said coolly. ‘Very vast and very different to the land I had grown up in.'

She heard the edge to his tone and wondered wildly whether a getting-to-know-you dinner had been such a good idea after all. Were they destined only to be compatible when they were horizontal? How about the easy conversation she
usually
managed to achieve when she was in the company of an intelligent, attractive man? She struggled for the right, light touch, even as she despised her own eagerness to please him. ‘But you liked it?'

He shrugged. ‘It was a new experience—and experience is always useful.'

She gave him a frozen smile. ‘And is that how you categorise me, Giovanni? As a useful experience?'

He gave her question a moment's consideration. ‘Not just as a useful experience, no.' His eyes mocked her as he lifted his glass in a toast. ‘More as a rather beautiful and enjoyable one. Wouldn't you agree?'

But it sounded more of a boast than a tribute, and Kate was glad that their food arrived at that precise moment, and that the ladling out of rice and chicken and lentils occupied their hands as well as meaning that she could drop her eyes from that unsettling gaze.

She wanted to ask him more about his life in order to find out more about the man, but she was scared of what it might reveal. His history would inevitably include details of his engagement, now broken—which instinct told her he bitterly regretted and blamed her for, at least in part. Because, despite his outwardly relaxed air, there was an unmistakable tension about him, a repressed kind of anger which he was only just managing to conceal.

She forced herself to eat a mouthful of curry, while he seemed to have no such reservations, eating his food with a sensual enjoyment, which was a pleasure to watch. And she found herself wishing that she had not been so compliant from the outset, wondering if she had applied her usual brakes something more enduring than a two-week affair might have come of it.

He glanced up to find her looking at him. She had barely touched a thing. ‘You're not hungry?'

She made a play of eating a piece of chicken, then put her fork down. ‘Not really.'

‘You want to leave?'

‘When you've finished.'

He ate a last mouthful of rice, his blue eyes fixed thoughtfully on hers. Then he put his own fork down and reached his hand across the table to take hers. ‘You're not having second thoughts, are you, Kate?' he questioned softly, unprepared for the sudden jolt of disappointment as he imagined her saying yes.

Of course she was. But even third or fourth thoughts wouldn't make her change her mind. Not now. She gave her head a little shake, even managing a little smile. ‘Of course not,' she told him serenely as he raised his hand to call for the bill. It was a little late for that!

Outside, he took her hand as they walked slowly back to the flat, stopping off at the pharmacy on the way.

And Giovanni looked at her with an expression of bemusement lighting his blue eyes when he had seen her rise in colour as he had taken his wallet out to pay for his purchase.

‘Why, Kate,' he observed softly, running a fingertip across her hot cheek, ‘you're blushing.'

She wanted to tell him that this wasn't the kind of thing she normally did—but what was normal any more? He probably wouldn't believe a word of it, and why should he? ‘They know me in this shop,' she said drily, by way of explanation.

‘Then they will know that you choose your lovers wisely,' he returned with an irresistible glitter of his eyes.

And all her doubts were driven away at the first hungry touch of his lips once the door of her flat had closed behind them.

‘I want you,' he told her unsteadily.

‘I'm right here,' she whispered back.

The next morning Kate rang downstairs and had Lucy clear her diary for the next two weeks, and launched wholeheartedly into a fairy-tale, unreal romance.

It was her first experience of living with a man—though the term ‘living' had a sort of permanence about it which didn't quite ring true in this case.

She set aside a shelf in the bathroom for him, and cleared a space in her wardrobe for his suits. She learned that he liked nothing more than black coffee for breakfast, that opera pleased him more than any other kind of music and that whatever emotions he had—and sometimes she wondered—he kept them firmly locked away on the inside. For Kate had only ever seen him angry—or passionate when he took her in his arms. The cool Giovanni who accompanied her to restaurants and art galleries—he gave nothing away.

Two days after he had first moved in, he met Lucy.

Kate had been dreading the meeting, without really knowing why, but one look at the disapproval which Lucy iced at him was enough to tell her that her fears had been justified.

‘Your sister doesn't like me,' he observed after Lucy had said a stilted hello and refused coffee.

‘She doesn't know you,' answered Kate brightly.

‘OK, she doesn't approve of me, then.' He paused and looked at her. ‘And why should that be, Kate?'

She supposed that there was no point in lying. She sighed. ‘She knows about you, and the fact that you were engaged when we first met,' she added, in answer to the questioning look in his eyes.

‘And your sister, being such a paragon of virtue, naturally
disapproved, did she? What does she do for a living, just out of interest—other than glare at your houseguests?'

Kate suppressed a shudder at his choice of word. Houseguest. You couldn't get any more coldly unemotional than that, could you? ‘She works for me. She takes and makes bookings, does my accounts, answers the phone—that kind of thing. And there's no need to make it sound as though I have houseguests like
you
all the time!'

‘And do you?' he drawled insolently, but the knife-edge of jealousy twisted itself sharply in his gut.

Bitter reproach sparked green fire from her eyes. ‘What do you think?'

He drove the jealousy away and forced himself to stay calm. ‘I'd like to think that this was a one-off situation,' he told her steadily. ‘For you as much as for me.'

‘For your ego's sake, I suppose?' she questioned heatedly.

He shook his dark head. ‘No, Kate, more for my pride's sake.'

‘Oh, really?'

‘And yours too, of course.'

‘Oh, you're…you're…'

He gave a soft laugh as he acknowledged her fire. ‘What am I,
cara
?'

‘Impossible!' she declared, without really knowing why. Or maybe she did. Maybe her rage was directed more at the fact that he would never really be hers to have—other than in a particularly satisfying, but curiously empty, sexual sense. Angrily she turned away from him, but he reached a lazy hand out and stopped her, pulling her, still resisting, into his arms. She struggled a little. ‘Go away!' she stormed as he bent to brush his lips against hers.

‘You know you don't mean that,' he murmured, feeling their velvet surface begin to tremble at that first contact.

‘Yes, I do….
Oh!
'

He kissed her in earnest then, and she went under, only to
gaze up at him dazedly when eventually he stopped the kiss. ‘That wasn't fair,' she whispered as she met the question in his eyes.

‘What wasn't?'

‘You say outrageous things to me and then think you can just kiss them better!'

‘So what do you want me to stop doing,
cara
—saying the outrageous things, or kissing them better?'

His cajoling tone coaxed her lips into an unwilling smile. ‘What do you think?' she asked, and he tipped her face up to trap her in a blinding blue stare, a different kind of question in his eyes this time.

‘I think we'd better go back to bed and make up properly, don't you?' he questioned unsteadily.

‘But we've only been up an hour!' Her protest sounded feeble even to her own ears, and the look of hungry intent on his face had her babbling at him like a tour-guide, watching in reluctant fascination as he smiled the smile of a man who knew he had won the battle. ‘And we were going to go to visit the Tower of London today, remember?'

‘It's been standing there for centuries; it'll wait for a few more hours,' he told her arrogantly, and led her back towards the bedroom.

‘I
THINK
that's everything.' Giovanni clicked shut his suitcase, and turned to look at where she stood, silently surveying him, her face impassive, and he wondered what thoughts were going through that beautiful head of hers.

So far, at least, there had been no word or demonstration that Kate was going to miss him, after a fortnight spent almost exclusively together—save when she had made an excuse to go downstairs to see her sister to discuss work.

And Kate watched him with a dull ache in her heart. Intellectually she had known that this moment would come, and emotionally she had prepared herself for the inevitable pain it would bring. But the reality was far worse than even her worst imaginings.

‘What time does your plane leave?'

He flicked a glance at his watch, and then again at her. ‘In two hours.' If it had been at any other time during the past two weeks then he might have tried to make love to her one more time. But this goodbye was turning into something he hadn't quite anticipated, and to take her into his arms to lose himself in that mindless pleasure would, he knew, somehow devalue what they had shared together.

‘Would you like some coffee before you go?'

More in an attempt to dissolve the brittle atmosphere than because he really wanted a cup, he nodded in agreement. ‘Please.'

She busied herself in the kitchen. Best cups. Best coffee. Some outrageously expensive chocolate biscuits she had once been given and which there had never been a right time to open. Before now.

She spooned coffee into the cafetiére and stared sightlessly out of the window. Would she ever have agreed to this arrangement if she had known that the inevitable parting would prove so painful?

When she carried the tray back into the sitting room he was half sitting, half lying on the sofa watching her, and her heart leapt as it always did at the sight of him.

‘Smells good,' he remarked.

‘Mmm.' She wished he would
say
something, other than make those bland comments which could have come from a stranger, and not the man who had shared her life for the past fortnight. She handed him a cup and then took her own over to the opposite side of the room and placed it on a small table beside her.

The distance between them seemed to be the size of a tennis court.

‘Kate,' he said suddenly. ‘Come and sit next to me.'

Her eyes narrowed and she felt the lurch of disappointment. Physical closeness meant only one thing where they were concerned. ‘There isn't time, Giovanni,' she told him dully, unprepared for the tightening of his mouth in response.

‘You think that the only reason I want you beside me is so that I can make love to you one more time before I go!' he accused hotly. ‘Is that it?'

‘There's no need to sound so outraged! That's what it always
does
mean where you're concerned!' she told him. ‘And we've hardly been behaving like saints for the last couple of weeks, have we?'

‘No.' He put his coffee down untouched, and got up to look out of the window, his hands thrust deep inside his pockets as he stared out at the river which was made silvery-grey by the rain today.

Kate watched the tense set of his shoulders and then he turned round, his face looking as though he was fighting some kind of inner war with himself.

‘It doesn't have to be over you know, Kate.'

It was her wildest dream become glorious reality. ‘What do you mean?' she questioned slowly, and her heart seemed to deafen her with its pounding.

‘You know that I come back to England from time to time?' Kate stilled as his words began to make immediate sense.

‘Go on,' she said in a strangled kind of voice. ‘Explain exactly what it is I think you're suggesting.'

He was trying to think logically about what would work best. For both of them. He gave a slow smile, captivating her with that mocking blue stare. ‘I can make sure that business brings me here on Friday—maybe I could stay over until Sunday. Here, with you.' The smile grew lazier. ‘How does that sound,
cara
?'

She thought of snatched weekends of bliss with him. Perfect, but never enough. It never
could
be enough. She would be transformed into one of those bloodless women who lived their whole lives from phone call to phone call. The odd visit would dominate her life, until the rest of it grew indistinct and she would become one of those ‘nearly' women. Nearly living, but not quite.

She shook her head. ‘Thanks, but no, thanks.'

He felt a flicker of irritation only marginally greater than the one of surprise. He had been confident enough in his power over her to expect her to accept. ‘Not even a moment to consider it, Kate?' he questioned sardonically.

‘I don't need to consider it.'

‘May I ask why?'

‘It's not what I want from a relationship, Giovanni.'

‘What exactly do you object to?' he drawled.

It hurt that he couldn't see. ‘All the highs of infrequent passion aren't enough.' She shrugged. ‘It isn't
real
, don't you see?'

A muscle began to pulse in his cheek. ‘I haven't heard you doing any complaining!'

She withered him a look. ‘That was different. That was never planned to be anything other than short-term, was it? The terms were laid out very carefully at the beginning. Surely you can't have forgotten?'

But he had been certain that he would want to let go by now, and he had been wrong. For a man who was rarely wrong it had been a salutary experience. His anger had been spent, but not so his passion for her—that raged like the fierce storm it had always been. He drew a deep breath, knowing that this was as close to conciliation as he would get.

‘Look, just what do you want, Kate?' he said evenly. ‘We still haven't known each other very long. Surely you're not holding out for living together—'

Her sharp, outraged intake of breath halted him.

‘I am
not
,' she said icily, ‘holding out for
anything
! My life is not a game show, Giovanni—even though sometimes it's felt weird enough to be one during the last couple of weeks—'

‘And just what is
that
supposed to mean?' Now it was his turn to sound icy.

How could she tell him that whatever he gave her, it was never enough? That she wanted more, and more still. She needed to go deeper with him than the great sex and the lunches and dinners and trips around London. She wanted more than a surface relationship, and she could not have it, she realised. Not with him.

‘Nothing, Giovanni.' She gave a weary sigh as she raked her fingers to pull the fall of hair back from her face, and looked at him sadly. ‘I knew it had to end, and so did you. I just don't want it to end on a bad note.' She hesitated. ‘But
neither do I want to try to sustain something we both know isn't sustainable.'

‘So that's it?'

‘It doesn't have to be this way. We can say goodbye, and enjoy the memories of what we had.'

His face grew even more shuttered. ‘As you wish.' He walked across the room and picked up his bags. ‘But you'll forgive me if I don't hang around.'

‘Of course,' she said stiffly, but she followed him out to the front door all the same, opening it for him and praying that he would kiss her. One last kiss to remember him by.

And, looking down at her, he knew what she wanted. Oh, yes. They had kept areas of their lives out of bounds for necessary reasons of survival. They had not discussed Anna, or the man she herself had been briefly engaged to. Those topics would have caused pain and jealousy and recriminations.

But her physical needs he knew inside out. He knew her body and her desires almost better than he knew his own. Not to kiss her would be to punish her, and a cruel and ruthless streak badly wanted to punish her for her rejection of him. Except that he needed that kiss just as badly as she did.

Something to remember her by.

He dropped the bags and drew her into his arms, and her eyes closed as though she could not bear to read what was in his face.

He kissed her. Softly at first, and then with a growing ardour which he knew he must quell, and when he pulled away from her, almost violently, they both gave ragged little sighs of regret.

As her eyelids fluttered open she was unsurprised by the hard and uncompromising set of his features, knowing that he could offer her nothing more than the very bare essentials.

She heard her lips framing a question she had not intended to ask. ‘And will you see…Anna?'

She wanted a reassurance that he was unwilling or unable to give her. What the hell did she expect him to do? Renounce
all others out of some inappropriate loyalty to a woman who had just said she didn't want to see him again?

‘Of course,' he said, quietly and truthfully, and saw how she tried not to let her pain show. ‘Sicily is a small island. We share many friends—it is inevitable that I shall see her.'

She wanted to ask him whether he would rekindle his engagement, whether absence had changed his feelings about Anna, but she didn't dare. She was afraid of what the answer might be. She nodded instead. ‘Goodbye, Giovanni,' she whispered.

‘
Ciao, bella
,' he gritted and swung out of the door before he could change his mind.

He fumed all the way to the airport, and thought how ironic it was that he remained angry, when he had sought her out precisely to rid himself of that emotion. And for two weeks he had existed in a state which had pushed that anger to the recesses of his mind, but now it was back, and with a brand-new focus.

So why was he angry now? Because she had told him that she had no wish to continue the affair? Wasn't his Sicilian pride wounded more than his heart?

Very probably.

It was purely physical, he told himself grimly as he returned his car to the hire company and picked up his bags. All it ever was and all it ever could be.

He followed the signs to the departure lounge, telling himself that he would fly home and forget all about her.

‘Can I get you anything, sir?'

‘Mmm?' He looked up absently.

‘Some coffee perhaps? Or something else?'

The stewardess flashed him the kind of smile which told him that there was more than coffee on offer, should he so desire.

Enjoy your freedom, he told himself.
Enjoy
it!

‘Coffee would be perfect,' he drawled in Italian, and al
lowed the corners of his mouth to lift in a smile which made the woman's eyes dilate with undisguised pleasure.

And he sank down into the comfort of the First Class lounge, while the stewardess fussed round him like a hen.

 

After he had gone, Kate behaved like a woman bereaved—not wailing or crying, but going from room to room to try to hang on to what she had left of him before it disappeared forever.

The scent of him on her pillow, and on the towel which she fished out of the laundry basket. Even his half-drunk cup of coffee she foolishly felt like preserving. But soon the pillowcase and the towel would go into the washing machine, and the cup in the dishwasher and then there would be no trace at all left of him—save the red roses he had bought her last week, and which were already beginning to wilt.

She buried her face in the flowers. Their bloom was fast-fading but the petals were still velvety-soft, and there remained the last sweet, lingering trace of scent. She breathed in deeply, as though that could bring new life to her, but the pleasure she gained was only fleeting, and she wondered how long the dull ache in her heart would last.

She sat staring at the bouquet for a long, long time, and only when she thought that the threat of wayward tears was safely at bay did she pick up the telephone to speak to her sister.

‘Hello?'

‘Kate?' Her sister's voice immediately filled with concern. ‘What's happened?'

‘Oh, Lucy,' she said, in an odd, flat voice which didn't sound like her voice at all. ‘He's gone.'

‘I'm on my way up!' said her sister grimly.

Determinedly Kate stripped the bed while she waited for her sister, and assigned all the temptations of the dirty linen to the laundry basket—because what good would it do her to mope around after him and keep reminding herself
of him? That would have only served a purpose if he was coming back.

And he wasn't.

When Lucy arrived, she frowned. ‘Are you OK?' The frown deepened. ‘Stupid question. Of course you're not OK.'

Kate bit her teeth into her bottom lip. ‘Is it too early for wine, do you think?' she asked huskily.

‘Nope! In fact you look as though you could use a drink,' said Lucy and followed her out into the kitchen. ‘So tell,' she said, still in that same grim voice, ‘just what your Sicilian stud had to say for himself before he left!'

‘Please don't call him that,' said Kate crossly as she took a bottle of white wine from the fridge and pulled the cork out.

Lucy glared. ‘Still protecting him, are you, Kate—even though he's treated you like a concubine for the past fortnight?'

Kate shook her head. ‘He has treated me beautifully over the past fortnight,' she defended, her voice softening with memory. ‘And I walked into it with my eyes wide open. I wanted it just as much as he did.'

‘Well, I hope it was worth it,' said Lucy, accepting the proffered glass.

Kate sipped and thought about it. Had it been? ‘I don't know,' she said honestly. ‘All I know is that I couldn't resist it—him—at the time, and yet it wasn't enough to carry on with.'

‘But you weren't given that option, were you?'

Kate gave a small, rather bitter laugh. ‘Actually, I was. Giovanni offered to carry on the affair—with him taking the occasional trip to England and us making a weekend of it.'

‘The
bastard
!'